Sean Penn's 'terrible regret' over his secret meeting with El Chapo

January 15, 2016

Sean Penn sparked
some serious controversy by interviewing Mexico's most wanted man, drug
lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in secret. While the actor has
shared his "terrible regret" over the meeting, he's not apologetic that
it happened in the first place.

No, it was that much of the coverage about the clandestine meeting focused on El Chapo's confessions, the legal repercussions Sean could face, and most of all, how the Hollywood star managed to secure an interview with the top drug dealer.

By publishing his story in Rolling Stone, Sean was hoping to contribute to the conversation on "the war on drugs" – something that he says has been overlooked.

TAP TO VIEW GALLERYSean Penn said he hoped his article would contribute to "the discussion about the war on drugs"

The message he was hoping to convey was that the U.S. government's pursuit of individual drug lords and traffickers doesn't make a difference in the bigger picture.

As El Chapo said himself, he doesn't feel responsible for the high levels of drug addiction because "the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all. If there was no consumption, there would be no sales."

The actor clarified that he wasn't involved in El Chapo's capture.

Focusing on the "bad guy" isn't the solution, said Sean. "We're going to put all our focus, all our energy, all our billions of dollars on the 'bad guy,' and what happens? You get another death the next day the same way.

"I have a regret that the entire discussion about this article ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the war on drugs.

"Let's go to the big picture of what we all want. We all want this drug problem to stop. We all want them – the killings in Chicago – to stop. We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not, there is a complicity there. And if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs.

"And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article came out, talking about that? One per cent? I think that'd be generous."

Sean and El Chapo's meeting was held in secret in October.

Sean also clarified that in no way did he contribute to El Chapo's capture. The Mexican drug lord escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico last July, and was captured for the third time earlier this month.

"There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I with El Chapo, that it was, as the Attorney General of Mexico is quoted, 'essential' to his capture," the actor said.

"We had met with him many weeks earlier ... on Oct. 2, in a place nowhere near where he was captured.

"The Mexican government was clearly very humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did. Well, nobody found him before they did. We didn't – we're not smarter than the DEA or the Mexican intelligence. We had a contact upon which we were able to facilitate an invitation."

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